R5, in the

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

business, is a DVD of a movie sold in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

very soon after the first screening in cinema, at reduced wholesale prices. It is made with a

telecine Telecine ( or ) is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process. Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on f ...

machine from an analog source and is typically of a lower quality than other retail releases.

Overview

Telecine (TK) is the

digitization DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a Digital data, digital (i ...

performed by the studio itself, usually from an analog

film print A release print is a copy of a film that is provided to a movie theater for exhibition. Definitions Release prints are not to be confused with other types of prints used in the photochemical post-production process: * Rush prints, or dailies ...

. The purpose of it is to create a high-quality digital copy (usually for a later

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

release). But unlike a DVD, an R5 is released before the digital post-processing is finished. The quality of the rips can widely differ, but an R5 can be almost indistinguishable from a DVD rip since many unauthorized film copies are published onto DVD with minimal editing.

Cyrillic letters , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

can be seen in the movie picture when text is replaced by Russian. This digital post-processing is an important step, and provides many qualitative benefits to the finished conversion and should not be under-appreciated. From color correction to grain removal/reduction there are many steps that improve the transfer that generally the R5 does not have, even if done by the originating studio. The name R5 refers to

DVD Region DVD region codes are a digital rights management technique introduced in 1997. It is designed to allow rights holders to control the international distribution of a DVD-Video, DVD release, including its content, release date, and price, all acc ...

5. In an effort to compete with

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

in these areas, the

movie industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post pr ...

chose to create a new format for DVD releases that could be produced more quickly and less expensively than traditional DVD releases. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they often lack both the image post-processing and special features that are common on DVD releases. This allows the film to be released for sale at the same time that DVD screeners are released. Since these screeners are the chief source of high-quality pre-DVD release unauthorized film copies (in comparison to

cam Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bin ...

telesync A telesync (TS) is a bootleg recording of a film recorded in a movie theater, often (although not always) filmed using a professional camera on a tripod in the projection booth. The audio of a TS is captured with a direct connection to the sound ...

, mostly), this allows the movie studios to beat the infringers to market. Bootlegged copies of these releases are often distributed on the internet and in some cases, R5 DVDs may be released without an English audio track, requiring the encoder to use the direct line audio from the film's theatrical release. In this case, the unauthorized release will be tagged with "LiNE" to distinguish it from a release with a DVD audio track. Before PUKKA/DREAMLiGHT introduced the R5 tag to the

warez scene The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is a worldwide, underground, organized network of pirate groups specializing in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media for free before their official sale date. The Scene distributes all fo ...

, the R5 releases were tagged as TC, DVDSCR or DVDRip. The image quality of an R5 release is generally comparable to a DVD Screener release, except without the added scrolling text and black and white scenes that serve to distinguish screeners from commercial DVD releases. R5 quality can be somewhat better than transfers produced by movie bootleggers because the transfer is performed using professional-grade film scanning equipment.

Overview

References